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Tag Archives: Algorithms

Google announced a new update to Panda algorithm, Panda 4.0, on May 20. This is an SEO change which affects many sites, it can cause them to rank higher or lower in search results. But what does this really mean?

This can be quite confusing. Let’s step back a bit here and explain a little Google algorithm history. Search Algorithms are computer programs that look for clues to give you what is most relevant.Google says its overall search strategy goal is for web sites, pages, to produce high-quality and relevant information for a better user experience. Google created a “Quality Rating” for sites. They also want to sort out special tricks used to improve SEO or bad/trick methods (such as spamming, copying or scraping info from other web sites and more).

Google major version algorithms are Hummingbird, Panda, and Penguin, each one focusing on a different facet of search. For each algorithm, there are separate updates. Simply put, Penguin gives guidelines on link building, Panda gives guidelines on combating spam, and Hummingbird focuses on building meaningful conversation content and opens the door to promoting more social connections to expand cross-connections via social media networks; it isn’t just about keywords anymore.

Back to Google Panda; this is a filter that prevents low quality sites and/or pages from ranking well in the search engine results page (or SERP), that is the listing of results returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The filter’s threshold is influenced by Google Quality Raters. Quality Raters are people (using stats too) who answer questions such as “would I trust this site with my credit card?” so that Google can distinguish the difference between high and low quality sites.

So what does the Panda 4.0 update really mean? Based upon initial analysis, this update reinforces and tightens up the rules for quality scoring. Again if you have useful quality content (meaning not thin or copied), you will show up better in Google search. Also, if you paid for an AdWords search and your Quality Score is lowered your ranked lower and you lose money.

For example, with the 4.0 update eBay has a 33% drop in SEO visibility and Ask.com fell 50%, perSearchMetrics

It seems like Google’s goal is to try to make webmasters/professionals stop thinking about how they can trick or play games with Google and just concentrate on making a great site/pages. It is also great that they play a watchdog role to weed out content cheaters. But we are all beholden to Google’s constantly changing thinking and how to interpret it. In the end, it can be really confusing so it helps to work with professionals who monitor the changes.